{"doi":"10.1038/s41467-017-01002-8","title":"Effective purifying selection in ancient asexual oribatid mites","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>\n                  <jats:p>Sex is beneficial in the long term because it can prevent mutational meltdown through increased effectiveness of selection. This idea is supported by empirical evidence of deleterious mutation accumulation in species with a recent transition to asexuality. Here, we study the effectiveness of purifying selection in oribatid mites which have lost sex millions of years ago and diversified into different families and species while reproducing asexually. We compare the accumulation of deleterious nonsynonymous and synonymous mutations between three asexual and three sexual lineages using transcriptome data. Contrasting studies of young asexual lineages, we find evidence for strong purifying selection that is more effective in asexual as compared to sexual oribatid mite lineages. Our results suggest that large populations likely sustain effective purifying selection and facilitate the escape of mutational meltdown in the absence of sex. Thus, sex per se is not a prerequisite for the long-term persistence of animal lineages.</jats:p>","journal":"Nature Communications","year":2017,"id":17409,"datarank":1.2839334957421284,"base_score":4.0943445622221,"endowment":4.0943445622221,"self_citation_contribution":0.6141516843333151,"citation_network_contribution":0.6697818114088133,"self_endowment_contribution":0.6141516843333151,"citer_contribution":0.6697818114088133,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":59,"citer_count":45,"citers_with_citation_signal":36,"citers_with_endowment":36,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":124668,"name":"Ina Schaefer","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":124669,"name":"Julien 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and Genetic Dynamics","Insect symbiosis and bacterial influences","Insect-Plant Interactions and Control","Medicine","Biology","Environmental Science","Animals","DNA, Mitochondrial","Mites","Mutation","Mutation Rate","Phylogeny","Population Density","Reproduction","Reproduction, Asexual","Selection, Genetic","Transcriptome"],"mesh_terms":["Animals","DNA, Mitochondrial","Mites","Mutation","Phylogeny","Population Density","Reproduction","Reproduction, Asexual","Selection, Genetic","Transcriptome","Mutation Rate"],"keywords":["Asexuality","Biology","Asexual reproduction","Negative selection","Nonsynonymous substitution","Evolutionary biology","Sexual reproduction","Evolution of sexual reproduction","Mutation Accumulation","Selection (genetic algorithm)","Lineage (genetic)","Natural selection","Genetics","Mutation rate","Gene","Genome"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":0,"sdg_label":"Life in 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